By Anthony Hennigan
There’s an honesty about Kevin McStay that you could say is reflected in his Mayo team at present.
In his pre-Kerry musings with the local press, one line stood out.
“If they’re not back in the panel next year it will be their fault not mine,” said McStay about a quartet of players he had just released due to persistent injuries. And just like how he has placed the ball firmly in their court, he threw the gauntlet at the rest of his squad in Killarney last Saturday.
“We had to react, we had to come up with some sort of reaction, we were very disappointed with our Connacht championship, it certainly wasn’t the way we had planned it,” the Mayo boss said in the wake of his side’s five points victory – Kerry’s first championship defeat at Fitzgerald Stadium in 28 years.
“I’m very pleased because the performance was good, we worked very hard after the last reversal and it’s lovely to see that come out onto the pitch.
Kerry manager Jack O’Connor with Mayo manager Kevin McStay at full-time in Killarney. Picture: INPHO/Evan Treacy
“It gives us two points but that’s all that was on offer, two league points in this group. They’re valuable ones, we’d have taken one at one stage if we had to, so getting two gives us a good start,” acknowledged the Ballina man after this opening round-robin match of the all-new All-Ireland SFC.
Winning the Allianz Football League Division 1 title but losing at home to Roscommon in the provincial championship seven days later, Mayo had six weeks to fill before travelling to Fitzgerald Stadium to play the defending champions who in the meantime had cake-walked the Munster SFC with wins against Tipperary and Clare.
“We got a nice block of work in and prepared well for the trip,” admitted Kevin McStay, whose team hit the ground running and should have been further than 0-12 to 0-7 ahead at half-time.
“We certainly knew that sitting back and letting the opposition bring it on to us wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Of course, we wanted the early bounce and we engaged very early and very often, and that set the foundation. It got us to half-time, we were in good shape and the challenge then was to get out, rinse and repeat, and keep that pressure on the opposition.
“The very pleasing thing for management is that there was a consistent application right throughout, there weren’t too many valleys and we kept the scoreboard ticking which is important down here, to keep the pressure on.”
The Mayo full-forward line of Aidan O’Shea, Ryan O’Donoghue and James Carr scored 0-10 in the first-half, with the latter twice denied goals by Kerry goalkeeper Shane Ryan who had also produced a fine save to thwart Diarmuid O’Connor in only the second minute. Matthew Ruane also drew a second-half stop from the overworked Ryan before Eoghan McLaughlin finally ended Mayo’s goal drought in the 61st minute to push the Green and Red six points clear. The manager admitted afterward that he’d probably have liked if at least a couple of the chances had been fisted over the bar instead.
“It might have been the better play, just to keep the margin ticking, but at the same time I wouldn’t discourage lads if the goal chances are there. I would never go after a player for a genuine chance but sometimes you have to recognise what’s on the scoreboard too and maybe just punch it over.”
McStay attributed a lot of Mayo’s success to strong running but on a much more basic level, said: “We just got a lot of good footballers out on the field”.
“We think they’re tidy players and they really wanted to perform in this championship. They felt they had stepped back a bit in the previous match and they had a bit to prove to themselves perhaps, and they certainly did that.”
There had been some surprise among the couple of thousand Mayo supporters in the attendance of 23,128 when three changes were announced to the team that had been named to start just 24-hours earlier. Captain Paddy Durcan and former captain Stephen Coen were replaced by Padraig O’Hora and Donnacha McHugh while Jason Doherty, whose only start this year had been in the dead-rubber league clash with Monaghan, was preferred at half-forward in place of Fionn McDonagh. What that allowed, however, was for Mayo to unload some big guns in the second-half, with Durcan, Coen, who made his 100th league and championship appearance, Tommy Conroy, Enda Hession and goal-scorer McLaughlin all introduced in a twelve-minute window. To hold something in reserve had always been the plan, said Kevin McStay.
“I think that’s what a lot of managements are trying to do, but you can unload all you like but if you’re not getting an impact? [The players] know we’re thinking about that impact, they’re not out there to wave at the crowd on their injury comebacks.
“I was very comfortable bringing them on, because they’re very experienced players and you feel that when the game is there to be won that they’re going to mind the rock and do the things you’d hope they’d do. And pretty much that’s what happened, they all made a contribution.
“It was more probably to do with guys returning after niggles and knocks that we didn’t need to start them, but of course we needed the game to be alive, that was the big challenge for us as a group – to keep this game in the melting pot all the way through, every minute of the game, and thankfully we got a little bit of a gap. So bringing on experienced players when you’ve got a bit of a gap, you can mind the ball that bit more carefully, you don’t have to be as gung-ho maybe.”
At this stage Cillian O’Connor is just about the only injury concern in the squad, aside from long-term absentee Brendan Harrison, and there’s an argument to be made that the depth to the Mayo panel is deeper than it ever has been. But asked if it’s that which could perhaps make this Mayo team more dangerous than past incarnations, Kevin McStay didn’t really wish to engage.
“I don’t go into that stuff, this is Mayo 2023, this is the version that we’re trying to build and to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. Every manager in the country realises you have to have a big panel for what’s ahead, so this is only a first step in the group.
“You have to build out your panel, we spent six months building out our panel, as every other team did as well.”
Mayo will return to action next weekend when they host Louth at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park on Sunday, June 4 while the final group game against Cork will be fixed for a neutral venue on the weekend of June 17/18.